No one, under pain of death and public humiliation, preferably a publicly humiliating death, shall be allowed to borrow, mimic, or more likely outright steal the Screwtape conceit from the author C.S. Lewis of blessed memory.
No one — no matter how talented a writer, no matter how much I may agree with his or her opinions — pulls it off. It always starts off with Dear Nephew or Dear Wormwood … and then we’re off to the bizarro world where up is down and bad is good.
Got it. But it’s never funny, it tries too hard to be “devilish,” and it’s a strain to glean the true gist of the points being scored because the writer is often too clever by half and bollixes the contraries all up.
Peter Kreeft has tried it. Eric Metaxas has tried it. Now a scribe for the American Baptist Press has tried it.
Stop it. It was Lewis’s. It is Lewis’s. And you have neither his voice nor his gifts.
Craft something original. You know, of your own. Or…
[play Liam Neeson video from Taken here]
Lars Walker
October 14, 2012 at 6:34 PM
I might mention, for the record, that I was a co-winner of the New York C.S. Lewis Society Screwtape Competition, back in the early ’70s. My letter was much, much better than my co-winner’s.
And just because you were so snippy, I’m not going to share it with you.
Anthony Sacramone
October 14, 2012 at 7:33 PM
I would have protested the award ceremony vociferously had I not been busy doing my homework.